Helpmeet
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Two mirrored one-shots. Caddy and Prince support each other in their struggle to avoid becoming their parents.
1. Chapter 1

Helpmeet

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Bleak House

Copyright: Public Domain/BBC

"You have four schools today, my love. I recommend a hasty sandwich."

Prince watches languidly from his couch as Caddy rushes back and forth to collect her sheet music, button little Esther's dress, hunt for her misplaced shoes, and throw together the recommended sandwich to eat between lessons. Thinking of yesterday's excellent roast chicken and mashed potatoes waiting in the larder for her husband and daughter, something in Caddy snaps. She is a patient woman, but even patience has its limits.

"I know," she tells him brusquely. "Would it be too much to ask for you to come along and help me?"

Esther's eyes widen as she watches them from the doorway. She is used to her mother's occasional sharpness, but rarely when directed at her father.

"Oh, Caddy, please don't ask me. You know I can't."

Prince's handsome face crumples with pain and humiliation as he gestures to his ruined legs. Ever since his unfortunate fall downstairs, in too much of a hurry to run one of his errands for old Mr. Turveydrop, the hardworking man she fell in love with has been a shadow of his former self. It breaks her heart to look at him, and in her pity, she has fallen into the habit of waiting on him more attentively than she ever did for her father-in-law. She hadn't realized, until now, how harmful that kind of help might actually be.

"Your arms seem to be in fine working order," she points out. "Why don't you play the music while I teach?"

"And watch the dancing?" he says bitterly. "And become an object of pity and contempt for all the children and their parents?"

Caddy rolls her eyes, but makes an effort to speak more gently. She has learned over her years of marriage that losing her temper, though unavoidable sometimes, is rarely helpful. Especially with such sensitive men as the Turveydrops.

"If anyone is to be an object of contempt this morning, I am," she jokes. "You know my piano playing isn't worth a farthing compared to yours. Come now, my love, please help me. You know I can't do without you."

She catches his gaze, silently letting him know how much she means it, how frustrated and tired she is from running the school by herself, and how much she needs him. _Come back_, she wants to tell him. _Come back and be my Prince again._

He must have understood, because his jaw hardens with fierce determination as he gestures for Esther to bring him his wheelchair. Slowly, awkwardly, the three of them maneuver him into it, and their daughter smiles with pride as she stands behind him to push.

He looks up at her with wide, anxious eyes, almost the way he did when he first proposed to her. She can se that he dreads being seen by their students, self-conscious as he is about his appearance, but she knows equally well that allowing him to spend the rest of his life on that couch would be infinitely worse.

"Thank you," Caddy murmurs, kissing her husband on the cheek. "I knew I could rely on you."

"I certainly hope so," Prince replies.


	2. Chapter 2

"No, Esther, not on any account! Mama is busy!" Caddy exclaims, waving one hand at her daughter while rubbing her own forehead with the other. She is sitting among a pile of papers, her fingers smudged with ink, her eyes bloodshot. She barely looks up.

Esther Turveydrop hovers apologetically by the door, a letter in her hand.

"She only wanted you to have a look at her letter to Mrs. Woodcourt," Prince says softly.

"Must it be tonight?" Caddy mutters. "These bills must be ready to send by tomorrow, and I've barely begun!"

"My dear, you know how precious her godmother's good opinion is to her," says Prince. "Is it not, Esther?"

The child nods, her blue eyes as sad and appealing as her namesake's. She drops her letter on Caddy's desk, and Prince makes an effort not to smile as he watches his wife struggling to ignore the spelling mistakes. Personally, he couldn't make out half the words, blotted and scrawled as they are, but he knows that Caddy will. And he also knows, deep inside his soul, how much it hurts to be unable to please someone you admire. _My son's qualities are not shining, but they are useful,_ he hears his own father say.

Mrs. Woodcourt is a kind lady and would never criticize little Esther, but the child does not know that. She may have Caddy's strawberry-blond hair and fine-boned features, but her painful attacks of shyness come from him – and being deaf hasn't made it any easier. Protectively, he gathers Esther up into his wheelchair and settles her in his lap. She smiles up at him; the one good thing about losing the use of his legs is the fascination this chair seems to hold for his equally, but differently disabled daughter.

"It's important for her to learn to write properly," he says. _Even more than most people, _he does not need to add.

Caddy throws down her quill, gets up from behind her desk, and bends down to meet her daughter at eye-level. The gentleness in her face makes her so beautiful that, despite eight years of marriage, Prince falls in love with her all over again.

"Tomorrow, sweetheart," Caddy tells Esther, quietly and firmly. "I give you my word. Let me finish these first, but tomorrow our vacation begins, and I will have as much time for you as you wish."

Some children might have squealed, but the way Esther beams and throws her arms around her mother speaks volumes even in silence.


End file.
